Nahum 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Nahum pictures the attack on Nineveh in fast, vivid detail: an attacker at the gates, warriors in red, chariots racing through the streets, the river gates thrown open, and the palace collapsing. The city is stripped of its silver and gold and left empty, while its people flee and no one turns back. The chapter ends by asking what became of the lions' den where the lions once fed without fear, and with the LORD of Hosts saying he is against Nineveh and will silence her messengers.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • One who shatters has come up against your face.
   • A command is given to guard the fortress.
   • A command is given to watch the road.
   • A command is given to make your loins strong.
   • A command is given to fortify your strength greatly.
2. 2:2
   • The LORD has turned the majesty of Jacob, the verb meaning either that he has restored it or that he has taken it away.
   • The majesty of Jacob is set alongside the majesty of Israel.
   • Emptiers have emptied them out.
   • They have ruined their vine branches.
3. 2:3
   • The shields of his mighty men are reddened.
   • The men of valor are clothed in scarlet.
   • The chariots flash like fire on the day he makes ready.
   • The cypress spears are brandished.
4. 2:4
   • The chariots race madly through the streets.
   • The chariots rush back and forth in the open squares.
   • Their appearance is like torches.
   • They dart about like lightning.
5. 2:5
   • He summons his nobles.
   • They stumble as they march.
   • They hasten to the city's wall.
   • The protective covering is set in place.
6. 2:6
   • The gates of the rivers are opened.
   • The palace is dissolved.
7. 2:7
   • Huzzab is stripped and carried away into exile, the word being either a name or a statement that it is decreed.
   • Her maidservants lead her away.
   • Her maidservants moan with the sound of doves.
   • Her maidservants beat upon their breasts.
8. 2:8
   • Nineveh has been like a pool of water throughout her days.
   • Its people are fleeing away.
   • They cry out, "Stand! Stand!"
   • No one turns back.
9. 2:9
   • A command is given to plunder the silver.
   • A command is given to plunder the gold.
   • There is no end to the store of treasure.
   • There is an abundance of every desirable object.
10. 2:10
    • She is emptied.
    • She is void.
    • She is laid waste.
    • The heart melts.
    • The knees knock together.
    • Anguish is in all loins.
    • The faces of them all grow dark.
11. 2:11
    • The question is asked where the dwelling of the lions is.
    • The question is asked where the feeding place of the young lions is.
    • There the lion and the lioness walked with the lion's cub.
    • Nothing made them afraid.
12. 2:12
    • The lion tore in pieces enough for his cubs.
    • The lion strangled prey for his lionesses.
    • He filled his holes with prey.
    • He filled his dens with torn flesh.
13. 2:13
    • The speaker declares that he is against you.
    • The speaker is identified as the LORD of hosts.
    • He will burn her chariots in smoke.
    • The sword will devour your young lions.
    • He will cut off your prey from the earth.
    • The voice of your messengers will no longer be heard.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the empire that had dominated the ancient Near East for generations and had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. The city fell to a coalition of Babylonians and Medes in 612 BC; this whole book is addressed to it. The King James does not name the city here, the name is supplied from the book's opening line. "Make thy loins strong" is a literal rendering of a Hebrew idiom: men wore long robes, and to fight or run hard you pulled the hem up and belted it at the waist, so "strengthen the loins" means brace yourself for violent effort.

2:2

"Jacob" and "Israel" are two names for the same people, Jacob was renamed Israel, and his descendants were called by either name. The Hebrew verb here can be read as past, present, or future, so translators differ over whether God has already restored this greatness, is restoring it, or will; the King James takes it one way ("hath turned away") and most modern versions the other. The image of a vine with its branches stripped is a standing figure for the nation ravaged by invaders.

2:3

Red and scarlet may mean shields of dyed leather and uniforms of red cloth, may mean metal catching the light, or may suggest blood, the Hebrew does not settle it. The last line is obscure: the same word means both "cypress/fir" and, by extension, spear shafts made of that wood, which is why the King James reads "the fir trees shall be terribly shaken" while modern versions read "the cypress spears are brandished."

2:4

"Justle" is the older spelling of jostle, and "broad ways" are the wide open squares of a city. Chariots were the fast strike weapon of ancient armies: light two wheeled carts pulled by horses, carrying a driver and a fighter with a bow or spear.

2:5

The "defence" or covering shield was a mantelet, a large portable screen of wicker or hide, set up at the base of a city wall so that attackers digging, battering, or climbing beneath it were protected from arrows and stones thrown down from above.

2:6

Nineveh stood on the Tigris, with the Khosr river running through the city and a system of canals, dams and sluice gates controlling the water. "River gates" are those water-controls, not the city's entrances; ancient accounts of the city's fall speak of flooding that undermined a stretch of the walls.

2:7

The King James "Huzzab" is a Hebrew word nobody has securely explained. The translators took it as a proper name, apparently of a queen; most modern versions read it as a verb meaning "it is fixed" or "it is decreed." Both readings are guesses at the same consonants. Moaning like doves and beating the chest with the hands were the standard public gestures of grief and mourning.

2:8

The comparison works two ways: Nineveh was famously supplied with water by canals and reservoirs, and a large population was described as a body of water, so a city emptying of its people is a pool draining away.

2:9

Nineveh's wealth was largely tribute and plunder carried in from the nations Assyria had conquered. The King James "pleasant furniture" means desirable goods of every kind, not chairs and tables, "furniture" in 1611 meant equipment or valuables generally.

2:10

The three Hebrew words behind "empty, and void, and waste" are built on similar sounds and rhyme with each other, a piling-up effect no English version can fully reproduce. "Faces gather blackness" is an idiom for the color draining from a face in terror.

2:11

The lion was Assyria's own emblem. Its kings kept lions, hunted them in staged royal hunts, and covered their palace walls at Nineveh with lion reliefs; royal inscriptions boast of the king falling on his enemies like a lion. The taunt turns their chosen image against them.

2:12

"Ravin" is an old word for torn prey, from the same root as ravenous. The picture is a predator that kills far more than it needs and drags the carcasses back to its cave, which is how the prophet describes an empire that lived off the plunder and forced tribute of other nations.

2:13

"LORD of hosts" translates a title meaning the LORD who commands armies, the armies of heaven, and in some passages Israel's armies as well. "Messengers" are the envoys Assyrian kings sent to surrounding nations to demand surrender and tribute; their voices carried the empire's threats, and their silence means the empire has stopped speaking.